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Mel Bochner
Melvin Simon Bochner (August 23, 1940 – February 12, 2025) was an American conceptual artist. He is considered to be one of the founders of Conceptual Art, and credited with reshaping the canon of contemporary art. Bochner's 1966 exhibition, “Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art,” is cited as one of the first conceptual art exhibitions in the world.
Melvin Simon Bochner was born in Pittsburgh on August 23, 1940. His father, Meyer Bochner was a sign painter, and his mother, Minnie Horowitz, was a homemaker. He was raised with one brother and one sister.
At age 8, he starting taking art classes at Carnegie Museum. In high school, he won recognition for his talent from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and studied with Joseph Fitzpatrick.
He attended Carnegie Mellon University and received his BFA in 1962.
After graduation, Bochner lived in San Francisco, traveled around Mexico, and eventually landed in Chicago, where he audited philosophy classes at Northwestern University.
In 1964, Bochner moved to New York City and worked as a guard at The Jewish Museum. In 1966, he was recruited by the influential art critic Dore Ashton to teach art history at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Bochner was Jewish, and his work sometimes explored Jewish themes. Starting in the 1960s, he evolved several of the exhibition strategies now taken for granted, including using the walls of the gallery as the subject of the work and using photo documentation of ephemeral and performance works. As Richard Kalina wrote in Art in America in 1996, Bochner was one of the earliest proponents, along with Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman, of photo-documentation work in which the artist "created not so much a sculpture as a two-dimensional work about sculpture."
His 1966 show at the School of Visual Arts, "Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art", is regarded as a seminal show in the conceptual art movement. Bochner photocopied his friends' working drawings, including a $3,051.16 fabricator's bill from Donald Judd. He collected the copies in four black binders and displayed them on four pedestals. The show was remade at the Drawing Center, New York, in 1998.
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Mel Bochner
Melvin Simon Bochner (August 23, 1940 – February 12, 2025) was an American conceptual artist. He is considered to be one of the founders of Conceptual Art, and credited with reshaping the canon of contemporary art. Bochner's 1966 exhibition, “Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art,” is cited as one of the first conceptual art exhibitions in the world.
Melvin Simon Bochner was born in Pittsburgh on August 23, 1940. His father, Meyer Bochner was a sign painter, and his mother, Minnie Horowitz, was a homemaker. He was raised with one brother and one sister.
At age 8, he starting taking art classes at Carnegie Museum. In high school, he won recognition for his talent from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and studied with Joseph Fitzpatrick.
He attended Carnegie Mellon University and received his BFA in 1962.
After graduation, Bochner lived in San Francisco, traveled around Mexico, and eventually landed in Chicago, where he audited philosophy classes at Northwestern University.
In 1964, Bochner moved to New York City and worked as a guard at The Jewish Museum. In 1966, he was recruited by the influential art critic Dore Ashton to teach art history at the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Bochner was Jewish, and his work sometimes explored Jewish themes. Starting in the 1960s, he evolved several of the exhibition strategies now taken for granted, including using the walls of the gallery as the subject of the work and using photo documentation of ephemeral and performance works. As Richard Kalina wrote in Art in America in 1996, Bochner was one of the earliest proponents, along with Joseph Kosuth and Bruce Nauman, of photo-documentation work in which the artist "created not so much a sculpture as a two-dimensional work about sculpture."
His 1966 show at the School of Visual Arts, "Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art", is regarded as a seminal show in the conceptual art movement. Bochner photocopied his friends' working drawings, including a $3,051.16 fabricator's bill from Donald Judd. He collected the copies in four black binders and displayed them on four pedestals. The show was remade at the Drawing Center, New York, in 1998.